MacBook Air has phantom third screen
 

On my 2011 MacBook Air, if I bring my MacBook in from home, where it isn't plugged into any monitors or DisplayLinks, and plug it into my DisplayPort monitor as well as my DisplayLink monitor -- without opening the lid -- the MacBook will report that it has three monitors available: The DisplayPort, the DisplayLink, and the MacBook Air's internal screen.

If I reboot, the Air's internal screen no longer shows up, as expected.

Is this a bug in DisplayLink or in Mac OS (running 10.7.2)?

Confirmed: DisplayLink problem
 

This is definitely a DisplayLink driver problem. I uninstalled the drivers and the problem no longer occurs.

Having to reboot every time I plug in a monitor is fairly inconvenient; would be nice to see this fixed.

Thanks for your report. Unfortunately it's not a known issue, so we will try to reproduce it and I let you know. If we have problem in reproducing it, I will ask you for more information.

I can reproduce it every time, without fail. This is on a vanilla Lion install, so there’s nothing exotic (odd drivers or complicated third-party software) that would be causing this.

Same behavior on MBP 13"
 

Ditto here:

MBP 13" early 2011, 2.7 i7, 8GB RAM, Lion 10.7.2

1. work in laptop mode (disconnected from ext monitors) no problem
2. sleep
3. plug in dual 1680x1050 displays (1 via diamond displaylink/usb hub, 1 via dvi/minidv connector) -- keep mbp closed
4. move mouse/kbd to wake up
5. 2 ext monitors look good, but mbp thinks it has 3 monitors -- the display control panel shows the little 13" screen off to the left. It is not the end of the world, but there are times when an app spawns a window way off to the far left and I can't get a hold of it -- e.g., display background color picker...

Ideas? Thanks

Exactly; that’s the same thing I’m seeing.

Same exact specs and issues as as the above.

To add, I've noticed that the issue did not manifest on 1.7b3 until I upgraded to 1.7b4.

I'm using a Henge Dock with my MBP connected to dual displays (19'" Dell 1280x800, and 22" 1920 x 1080). 2 ext. monitors look good, but there is a phantom 3rd display. Outlook always spawns a window to the "phantom display" whenever I create/reply to any new email. The only remedy is to reboot the system and all is normal again until I sleep, then wake up with Displaylink connected.

Should I just roll back to 1.7b3?

Thanks

So… DisplayLink forum staff… any input? Is this being looked into?

temporary script to retrieve lost windows
 

Fellow black-hole-window comrades: while display link is working on a fix for us (you are working on a fix of this bug, right?) if you paste the following script into applescript and run it, it should pull the windows out of the invisible zone. Not a fix, but at least if you have something critical on a window that you might have otherwise lost, this might save it from being lost. *THANKFULLY, THE BROWSER WINDOW I USED TO PAY FOR MY TWO DISPLAYLINK DEVICES DID NOT BECOME IRRETRIEVABLY LOST ON THE INVISIBLE THIRD MONITOR MID PAYMENT*


***paste into applescript***

-- Example list of processes to ignore: {"xGestures"} or {"xGestures", "OtherApp", ...}
property processesToIgnore : {}

-- Get the size of the Display(s), only useful if there is one display
-- otherwise it will grab the total size of both displays
tell application "Finder"
set _b to bounds of window of desktop
set screen_width to item 3 of _b
set screen_height to item 4 of _b
end tell

tell application "System Events"
set allProcesses to application processes
set _results to ""
repeat with i from 1 to count allProcesses
set doIt to 1
repeat with z from 1 to count processesToIgnore
if process i = process (item z of processesToIgnore) then
set doIt to 0
end if
end repeat

if doIt = 1 then
tell process i
repeat with x from 1 to (count windows)
set winPos to position of window x
set _x to item 1 of winPos
set _y to item 2 of winPos

if (_x < 0 or _y < 0 or _x > screen_width or _y > screen_height) then
set position of window x to {0, 22}
end if
end repeat
end tell
end if
end repeat
end tell

Thanks for something xn1ncrmns.

Hopefully, DisplayLink is working on a fix for this........